NAZI PROPAGANDA IN MEIN KAMPF

Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez

Relaciones Internacionales – Hª TPC
 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

Index

Index............................................................................................................................................ 1
Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 2
National Socialist regime ..................................................................................................... 3
Adolf Hitler´s Mein Kampf .................................................................................................. 6
Volume I – Chapter VI excerpts ...................................................................................... 7
Volume II – Chapter XI excerpts ..................................................................................... 8
Joseph Paul Goebbels (1897 – 1945) ................................................................................. 9
11 principles of propaganda ........................................................................................... 10
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 11

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Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

Introduction

The idea of the following work, together with its respective presentation made
in class, is to present in a more concrete way the sociopolitical regime of Germany
during the Third Reich, analyze the rise to power of the National Socialist party and
try to understand the causes and consequences of its stay in power from 1933 to 1945.

The work revolves around the best-known literary work of the National
Socialist leader, Adolf Hitler. The book I analyze is Mein Kampf, and will specifically
deal with the subject of war propaganda, collected in two chapters in the first and
second volumes of the book.

In addition to war propaganda, I will develop the character of Joseph

Goebbels, the master of propaganda in the Reich, and one of the Führer's most trusted
people until his death in Berlin in 1945. I will treat his personality, his career as a
leader of the Nazi party and his eleven principles on propaganda.

I will finish the essay giving some brief conclusions about Nazi propaganda,
its way of being and the effect it had and why it had such effect in the German society
of that time. I will now give a few brief touches on propaganda, on persuasion and on
the emotional charge and how it exerts its effects on the emotions of the German
citizens of that time. Thus, I will give way to the chapters of Mein Kampf that deal
with the subject more broadly.

It is easy to say that an essential aspect of propaganda is persuasion:

"promote an interactive dependency receiver-receiver with the aim of influencing it.
Therefore, a propaganda is a process of persuasion in turn based on psychological
techniques and suggestion" (Pizarroso, 1993: 27). 1 This consists of inspiring a person
involuntary words or acts, dominating his will and leading it to act in a certain sense
"without providing evidence or any logical basis for acceptance, whether or not this

1
PIZARROSO QUINTERO, Alejandro: Historia de la propaganda. Eudema, Madrid, 1993.

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Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

basis" (Brown, 1991: 24).2 The propagandist rarely argues, he limits himself to
making affirmations in favor of his thesis, appealing, for that, to the emotions.

Propaganda is based on the emotional charge of people and appeals to the

feelings provoking emotional pressure on the, However, propaganda only evokes,
stimulates and radicalizes these feelings. For these reasons, it is essential to connect
with the emotions and feelings of the crowd; then, they will only have to be stimulated
according to the interests of the propagandist. In short, propaganda is effective when
it does not pose a threat to the convictions of the receiving population, when it does
not directly clash with the interests of the audience. In some cases, others will appeal
to fear, anger, hope or guilt. Hitler knew the German population perfectly and the
feeling of guilt after the defeat in World War I. Moreover, Hitler did not get Germany
to become an anti-Semitic nation, because the seed was already, to some extent, sown.

He only had to convince them that the war had not been lost because of their
poor performance but because of "the back-stabbing of Jews and communists." With
this, he returned to the German people the confidence and security they had lost. The
use of the theme of the war was from the beginning essential for Hitler.

Hitler left nothing to improvisation. The essential aspects in which all

propaganda must influence are expressed in Mein Kampf. All that remained was to
transfer them to the practical field. Joseph Goebbels, who will be introduced later,
would deal with that, under the strict supervision of Hitler.

National Socialist regime

I think it is important to understand the context in which there was a

phenomenon like the use of propaganda by the Nazi party, and that is why I will make
a quick review of the history surrounding Hitler and his party, dividing into four stages
the consolidation of the National Socialist regime in Germany. I will not go into detail
at each stage, but I will give a few general brushstrokes to understand such an
important event in the history of Europe and contemporary political theories.

2
BROWN, J.A.C.: Técnicas de persuasión. Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1991.

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Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

Thus, the first stage will be the advance of the Nazi party, from 1919 to 1929
and as it made its way through a weakened and unstable Weimar Republic. The second
stage is the dissolution of the Weimar Republic itself and the role that National
Socialism played in it. After the collapse of the Weimar Republic there is the
consolidation of Nazi power between 1933 and 1934, which would be the third stage.
And the fourth and final stage: the stay of Hitler and his party in power from 1934 to
1945.

First stage: Both Hitler and the Nazi Party, founded in 1919, were, in a real
sense, product of the German defeat in the First War World. It was that defeat, of
which he had news in the field hospital where he was being treated for gas poisoning,
which prompted Hitler to devote himself primarily to politics. Since then, he devoted
his life to preparing Germany for another war European that would repair that
unearned defeat.

On July 29, 1921, he won his first decisive success, when an extraordinary
meeting of party members, renamed the National Socialist Workers Party in February
1920, appointed Hitler the party's first president with dictatorial powers. In the spring
of 1920 SAs were established, a shock force that gave the party a qualitative advantage
over other similar parties, which multiplied before the mostly unstable political
climate in the first years of the postwar. The Nazi party surpassed all the other parties
in the use of avant-garde propaganda techniques, making massive demonstrations in
which columns of men marched in unison making the salute (heil), to the sound of
martial music and with flags deployed. The choice of visual symbolism was also
significant: signs and emblems of the Indo-Germanic mythical past were deliberately
manipulated for a new political use.

Between November 8 and 9, 1923, Hitler and his then comrade-in-arms

General Erich Ludendorff, taking advantage of general political unrest, tried to
overthrow the Bavarian state government and the national government in Berlin. The
coup failed, and the conspirators were arrested and put on trial for high treason.
However, Hitler managed to turn the alleged trial into a propaganda masterpiece,
proclaiming infamies against the "Jewish Republic" and the corrupt "system".

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 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

The years 1924-1928 were mainly a period of internal organization and

political incubation. After his liberation, Hitler devoted himself to the task of
organizing the party and concentrating its dictatorial authority.

In the Reichstag elections in May 1928, the Nazi Party received 2.6% of the
votes, mainly un rural areas. The carefully organized 1929 Nuremberg meeting
marked the recovery of the Nazi Party from the setback in the electoral defeat of 1928,
and its successful adaptation to the era of mass organization and mass demonstrations,
where Hitler received support from wealthy people and German universities.

Second stage: The Nazi Party took advantage of the growing disenchantment
of the German masses in the face of democracy. The attraction of the Nazis quickly
adapted to different situations and promised everything to everyone. Between 1930
and 1933 there were three German chancellors: Brüning, von Papen and von
Schleicher, followed by Adolf Hitler. The head of state from 1925 until the arrival of
Hitler was Paul von Hindenburg.

Two things stand out in this period. First, the access of Hitler to power was not
the result of a violent takeover of the government or a free democratic election. At the
time of its designation, the Nazi Party was the largest party, with 33.1% of the vote,
but still far from being a majority. Second, the Nazi arrival to power would not have
been possible without the dissolution of the Weimar Republic and the failure of its
parliamentary democratic system.

Third stage: The day Hitler was appointed prime minister by Hindenburg
came to be known in the Nazi tradition as "the seizure of power”. January 30 was not
the end point of the transfer of power, but its beginning. It took the Nazis not one day
but 18 months, from January 30, 1933 to August 3, 1934, to consolidate their control
of the state and of society.

The last logical step to consolidate power after winning support and depriving
other parties and politicians of rights was to eliminate from the ranks of the Nazi
movement all the elements that defied Hitler's authority. The commanders of the SA
were executed between June 30 and July 2, 1934, and the place of the SA was
occupied by the SS, the executive body par excellence of the Nazi ideology and its
symbolic incarnation and commanded by Heinrich Himmler.

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Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

Under the command of Himmler, the SS grew from a few hundred to around
52,000 members by the end of 1932, and 209,000 by the end of 1933. Devoted to the
völkisch ideology of blood, race and land, Himmler set out to transform the body of
guard in an elite.

Fourth stage: After Nazi rise to power, comes what we already know as one
of the most turbulent periods in the history of Germany. A fierce war in Europe and
the Pacific. Alliances of fascist and dictatorial powers against countries that defended
democracy, and deaths numbered by millions.

Horrors like the massacres of the Holocaust and a battle to death, in which the
German population was reduced to crumbs and their economy shattered. I want to
emphasize that throughout the process of the Nazi Party promotion to power,
propaganda played a fundamental role in aligning the population.

In fact, in the case of the Nazi regime, talking about propaganda is talking
about the policy on which a whole system was based during its existence. Propaganda
was not only a massive use, a systematic action of methods and techniques, but a
whole political strategy on which the entire regime was based on. This conception
could have been the result of Hitler's activity as head of party propaganda, at which
time he became aware of the persuasive and mobilizing power of an adequate
propaganda apparatus, as we will see know in some excerpts of Mein Kampf.

Adolf Hitler´s Mein Kampf

The knowledge that Hitler had of the propaganda was not intuitive, as some
author defends. Some passages of the Mein Kampf show that he had studied the Allied
and German propaganda strategies during the First World War. From that moment,
Hitler becomes fully aware of the importance of oratory, of the force of the word, of
what, in the end, well-planned propaganda is capable of achieving. Any propagandist
could even be guided only by his work, since the main secrets of propaganda are
contained in it.

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 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

Starting from this prior knowledge, the merit of Hitler consisted in its
masterful application, in having plunged the German population into an almost
imaginary world in which nothing escaped the control of the Fuhrer.

Next, I will comment on several paragraphs of the chapters dealing with

propaganda in Mein Kampf. The first volume of the book touches on the subject of
war propaganda in chapter six while in the second volume it is dealt with in the
eleventh chapter. From each extract of the chapters I will make a brief commentary,
in which I will try to explain Adolf Hitler´s words.

Volume I – Chapter VI excerpts3

“Ever since I have been scrutinizing political events, I have taken a

tremendous interest in propagandist activity. I saw that the Socialist Marxist
organizations mastered and applied this
instrument with astounding skill. And I soon realized that the
correct use of propaganda is a true art (…)”

Hitler understood from the beginning the need to know and master the art of
propaganda, not only as a method of mass control, but as mentioned in this chapter,
as an impulse to win a war.

“The German nation was engaged in a struggle for a human

existence, and the purpose of war propaganda should have been
to support this struggle; its aim to help bring about victory.”

He mentions how a good use of propaganda would have contributed to a

different outcome in the first great War for his country, from which Germany is
severely harmed, a factor that will later play in favor of the rise of the Nazi Party to
power.

“The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training

of the individual, but in calling the masses
attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for
the first time placed within their field of vision.”

3
Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945. (1999). Mein Kampf, Chapter VI, Volume I. Boston: Houghton Mifflin

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Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

You can see in this extract how the population was seen at that time. A mass
of people to manipulate, to make them believe something. As Goebbels would later
say in one of its principles, propaganda should be focused on the masses, on the lowest
part of the social strata, in a simple and easy language, without technicalities.

“By contrast, the war propaganda of the English and Americans

was psychologically sound. By representing the Germans to their
own people as barbarians and Huns, they prepared the individual soldier for the ter
rors of war, and thus helped to preserve him from disappointments.”

Hitler analyzes in the sixth chapter the propaganda of his enemies in the First
World War. And yes, Adolf Hitler fought in the trenches and tried the war firsthand.
In this chapter he praises the ability of the Allies to prepare their soldiers for the worst,
through propaganda and to inculcate hatred towards their enemies, denigrating them
in any way. It is seen how even the Allies carry out the propaganda principles that
Goebbels would later collect. Deny the enemy, referring to German soldiers as
barbarians

Volume II – Chapter XI excerpts4

“When I entered the German Labour Party I at once took charge

of the propaganda, believing this branch to be far the most important for
the time being. Just then it was not a matter of
pressing necessity to cudgel one's brains over
problems of organization. The first necessity was to spread our ideas among
as many people as possible”

Hitler reconoce que lo primero de lo que se ocupa en el partido es de la

propaganda, de entenderla, de organizarla y de hacerla realidad. En este capítulo Hitler
habla más del partido y de su organización, de cómo lo ve y lo que espera de él. Habla
en este capítulo de la necesidad de hacer llegar las ideas al pueblo antes que otras
cosas más burocráticas.

“The propagandist inculcates his doctrine

among the masses, with the idea of preparing

4
Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945. (1999). Mein Kampf, Chapter XI, Volume II. Boston: Houghton Mifflin

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 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

them for the time when this doctrine will triumph, through the body of combatant
members which he has formed from those followers who have given proof of the
necessary ability and willpower to carry the struggle to victory.
The final triumph of a doctrine will be made all the easier if the propagandist has
effectively converted large bodies of men to the
belief in that doctrine and if the organization
that actively conducts the fight be exclusive, vigorous and solid.”

This extract is nothing more than an ode to the final objectives of the
propaganda. What it should be and what it should have been for the Germany that
Hitler envisioned. This extract also lets you read between the lines the function of
Goebbels propaganda principles as the one of unanimity.

“Moreover, it is the duty of the organization to see that the

fighting spirit of the movement does not flag or die
out but that it is constantly reinvigorated and strengthened.”

Finally, Adolf Hitler hints at the ultimate function of propaganda. Bring the
German people down the same road, “en masse”, towards the same goal and under
the command of a single supreme leader, giving the people the image of unity and
strength they had lost after the First World War.

Joseph Paul Goebbels (1897 – 1945)

Joseph Goebbels is essential to understand all the propaganda that took place
in the Third Reich. With extreme fanaticism, he took care to take Hitler to Olympus,
a god to worship where Goebbels was his prophet5

The career of the most important ideologist of the Third Reich took off after
the victory of the Nazi party. That is when Hitler began to notice him. He was
appointed to the German Nationalist Workers Party (NSDAP), Gauleiter (zone chief)
in Berlin in 1926. His speaking skills were exceptional, so 4 years later, in 1930, he
was appointed leader of the Propaganda Division. He was in charge of taking their

5
Martín, J. (16 de julio del 2015) Joseph Goebbels, el profeta de Hitler. [Entrada de blog]
Recuperado de:
http://www.elmundo.es/la-aventura-de-lahistoria/2015/07/16/55352d91268e3e3c798b4577.html

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 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

strategy not only to their local area of Berlin, but to the entire nation. Here Goebbels
had already become a promoter of Hitler and the party.

In 1933 Hitler appointed him Minister of Instruction and Propaganda of the

Reich, it will be here where he takes control of all the media and branches of artistic
expressions. Goebbels aimed to exalt the Nazi party and bring the German people to
a more than deserved glory. The budget of this Ministry between 1933 and 1941 was
multiplied by ten.

For the next section we must mention Leonard Doob, who dedicated his life
to study all of Goebbels journals and made a synthesis of them. I will mention below
the principles of propaganda summarized by Leonard W. Doob (1948) with a brief
explanation of each:

11 principles of propaganda

Principle of simplification of the single enemy. Adopt a single idea, a single

symbol. Individualize the adversary in a single enemy.

Principle of the method of contagion. Gather various adversaries in a single

category or individual. The adversaries must be constituted in individualized sum.

Principle of transposition. To load on the adversary own errors or defects,

responding the attack with the attack. "If you cannot deny the bad news, invent others
that will distract them."

Principle of exaggeration and disfigurement. Convert any anecdote, however

small, into a serious threat.

Principle of vulgarization. “All propaganda must be popular, adapting its level

to the least intelligent of the individuals to whom it is directed. The larger the mass to
be convinced, the smaller the mental effort must be. The receptive capacity of the
masses is limited and their understanding scarce; besides, they have great facility to
forget.”

Principle of orchestration. “The propaganda should be limited to a small

number of ideas and repeated tirelessly, presented again and again from different
perspectives, but always converging on the same concept. No fissures or doubts.”

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 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

From here also comes the famous phrase: “If a lie is repeated enough, it ends up
becoming true.”

Principle of renewal. New information and arguments must be constantly

issued at such a rate that, when the adversary responds, the public will already be
interested in something else. The adversary's responses must never be able to
counteract the increasing level of accusations.

Principle of the likelihood. Build arguments from different sources, through

so-called probes balloons or fragmentary information.

Principle of silencing. Silence the issues on which there are no arguments and
disguise the news that favors the adversary, also counterprogramming with the help
of related media.

Principle of transfusion. As a rule, propaganda always operates from a

preexisting substratum, be it a national mythology or a complex of traditional hatreds
and prejudices. It is about spreading arguments that may take root in primitive
attitudes.

Principle of unanimity. To convince many people who think "like everyone

else", creating a false impression of unanimity.

As we can see, all these principles apply to nowadays propaganda, and are
used broadly by propaganda masters all over the world with political ends. Goebbels
was such a master in propaganda that he might be one of the few Nazi party leaders
who is actually remembered because of something really extraordinary. Taking
propaganda to the next level.

Conclusions

If the masterful application of Nazi propaganda was part of the success of the
regime, the other key aspect were the peculiarities of the German population: not only
its personality, its character of submission to authority, certain anti-Semitism, but also
currents of German thoughts - which stressed the need for war and the spirit of
struggle of the people or hatred of the Jews -, the political circumstances - a weak

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 Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza

Weimar Republic, a democracy that failed to solve the main problems of society -, the
Treaty of Versailles and the feeling of guilt after the war, the socio-economic
circumstances, the reparations of the war or the crisis of 1929. Without this
accumulation of aspects, the Nazi propaganda is likely that it would not have been as
useful and effective as it was. But who knows.

Therefore we can admit that the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda is produced

by both aspects: a complex propaganda machine that affected all areas of German life,
conveniently planned and with an exhaustive application and, on the other hand, the
characteristics of a society plunged in guilt, disoriented and without illusion, who
succumbed to a message of hope that filled their aspirations through words,
identifying a common enemy, restoring national unity and guaranteeing power and
security for friends and terror and violence for enemies.

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